Listener Features and the Identification of Emotion in Classical Music

Abstract

Music has been a part of human development since before speech evolved and is an effective form of communication and expression across the world. In particular, the connection between music and emotions seem to be very strong but not very much understood. Recent studies in the past few decades have just begun to delve into the concrete associations between music and emotion. There have been debates about whether there is a significant difference between the way we identify emotions in music through different listener features (based on the circumstances and the identity of the listener). Our paper aimed to investigate whether there would be a difference in recognizing emotions within classical music depending on different listener features such as age, sex, familiarity with classical music, personality, mental health, and culture (within the Korean-American community). Our results show that there are not many significant differences between any of the categories, implying that although subjective experience makes musical experience unique, the intentions of the composer are intact and may be identified throughout all the categories.